Chapter 64
She’s standing at the edge of the garden again.
The flowers are in bloom, and the air smells like summer and cinnamon, like her kitchen always did. I know it’s a dream—my grandmother has been dead for a long time—but still, I walk toward her. Because how can I not?
“Hannah,” she says, just like always, like the years and the grave and my blood don’t matter.
Her voice is warm as she picks string beans from the vines and places them into a basket.
Her name is Theresa, which means harvester, and she is my mother’s mother.
Even in my dream she reminds me that the harvest gives us hope—that nothing is truly lost, only carried into the next season.
My throat tightens. I forgot how soft her eyes were. How she looked at me like I was good.
“I’ve missed you.” My voice breaks. “So much.”
“I know.” She cups my cheek.
Her fingers are cool, but not cold like mine. Mine are always cold.
“You’ve been walking through fire, haven’t you?”
I nod. There’s no point lying. She never knew my true heritage. She died before I found out myself.
But did she know?
She always hated my father. Hated that my mother married him.
She hated the divorce, hated my mother’s remarriage, yet she seemed to hate Richard less than she hated my father.
If she only knew…
She knows in my dream.
She knows who and what I am, and she loves me. Still, I’m her favorite of five grandchildren.
And she knows who and what my stepfather is.
I kneel and help her with the green beans. “I took the life of another,” I say.
“I know,” she says softly.
I look around the backyard in suburban Colorado, at the large olive tree, the ponderosa pine that she transplanted from a mountaintop, the concrete deck with the chairs I remember.
“Is this the ether?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not as you know it. This is the dream world, and I’m not really here in this garden. It’s a way for me to communicate with you that your brain can comprehend.”
I nod again. “Grandma, I have something I have to do.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I may lose my mother when I do it.”
Grandma turns away from the green beans and meets my gaze. She looks younger than I remember. Her hair is no longer gray but a beautiful brown, lighter than my own.
“Your mother is one of my biggest regrets,” she says. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on her. I should have taught her what she was worth. She was beautiful and smart, but I told her she was merely average.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”
“It was the way,” she says. “It was how my father raised me. I didn’t know any better. It led her to marry two men, neither of whom were worthy of her. She has never been happy, your mother.”
“Never?” I ask.
“Not like I was. Your grandfather plucked me out of a life of poverty and gave me a beautiful home and three wonderful children. If only…” She stares wistfully over the fence at the High Line Canal behind the house. A few horseback riders pass by.
“If my mother was wonderful, as you say, why didn’t you tell her?”
“I should have,” she admits, “but if I had, she wouldn’t have married your father, and then you wouldn’t exist.” She drops her gaze to my abdomen. “And neither would my great-grandson.”
I slide my hand over my belly. The love I feel for him and his father washes over me in such a huge wave that it almost hurts.
“Yes,” I reply. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
“It’s the only way to look at it, Hannah,” she says. “Because it can’t be changed. Wishing doesn’t make anything so. And I wouldn’t give you up for anything.”
“Would you have loved me so much if you knew I was half vampire?”
She cups my cheek again. “I have no doubt.” She brushes a strand of hair from my face like I’m still six years old and safe in her lap. “You always had the fight in you. Even when you were just a little thing. You think I didn’t know there was something different about you?”
I freeze. “You did?”
“I didn’t know what,” she says gently. “But I knew you weren’t like the others. You saw things. Felt more. Held pain in those little shoulders like a grown woman.”
She presses her forehead to mine, and I swear I can smell the flour on her apron, feel the thrum of her heartbeat like it’s meant to sync with mine.
“You are not your bloodline. You’re an individual who is capable of so much love. Does it matter that you’re half vampire? Of course it doesn’t. All that matters is that you are you. Do you understand?”
I nod, too fast.
“Then act like it,” she whispers. “Stand up. Take back what’s yours.
If it costs you the love of your mother, then I shall take that blame, not you.
I should have given her more while I was on earth.
I should have shown her how much she was valued.
That is on me. It was never on you, Hannah.
Don’t you dare let the darkness make you forget who loved you first.”
“You?”
“Yes, honey. Me. And your mother.”
She’s not wrong. My mother did love me once. Before Richard.
She places something smooth in my hand, and—
I wake up gasping, fists clenched in my sheets, eyes burning with something that isn’t blood lust for once. Just memory.
And something that feels like hope.
The dream clings to me like smoke. But my grandmother’s voice is a blade in my chest. Clean. Unshakable.
All that matters is that you are you.
I sit up, the sheets twisted around my waist, my body thrumming with something ancient and sharp. Not just thirst. Not just rage. Purpose. My grandmother saw me. She knew. Maybe not the name of what I was, but the shape of it. The weight.
And she still loved me.
She would’ve fought for me.
So now I will fight for my child, for Rogan.
For myself.
Rogan sleeps next to me. I smooth my hand over his stubbled jawline.
In sleep he looks almost gentle. Awake? Not so much.
I wouldn’t have him any other way. His wolf blood will give our son that feral strength that will make him unstoppable when cornered, savage when threatened, loyal beyond reason.
My vampire half will give him the shadows, teach him how to move through them, how to command them. Visual and auditory acuity and supernatural speed. Power stitched into every heartbeat.
And my humanity will… God, I hope it gives him mercy. The ability to choose softness when the world demands violence. To love without needing to destroy.
Because he’ll have enough monsters in his blood. He doesn’t need to become one.
Rogan stirs next to me and lets out a yawn. “Princess?”
“I’m here.”
But I won’t be for long. Already I feel the storm raging, my blood preparing me for what I must do.
Not merely dethrone the demon king.
But end him.
And then face the consequences.